


Up in the hills

by Arkeis07



Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-19
Updated: 2013-12-19
Packaged: 2018-01-05 04:13:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,809
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1089494
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Arkeis07/pseuds/Arkeis07
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"We both do well in the woods; it’s a place of comfort for us. Things are simple here."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Up in the hills

**Author's Note:**

> Version one. Spontaneous fic that will be expanded on or re-vamped. Just had to get it out of my system, my headcannon has been unrelenting lately.

v. 1

Below me she puffs out a long trail of thick, slow-moving smoke. The frozen air around her lips takes her warmth and reddens them. She leans further back onto the boulder and her shoulder hits my thigh, knocking my hand out of place as I lean over my knees to scrape clean my skinning knife. I give her a look and a huff in response before checking my fingers for damage.

"You want?" she asks with a croak in her throat.

"Where did you get that even?"

"You can find it growing wild just about anywhere, it’s just that they stopped letting people think you could smoke it. Everybody just sees a dirty weed with a pretty yellow flower." Joanna flicks some ash out of the little pipe she has whittled from a branch she warmed between her breasts. When I asked her earlier what she was doing with it, yanking her coat and woolen sweater down her neckline and stuffing the piece of wood down her top, she looked back at me and jiggled her knife by her hip, "Wood is much more malleable when it’s warm."

My eyebrows raised but I said nothing. She’d been letting me witness, as of late, some of the skill sets she has learned from her home district and elsewhere. Turns out she’s a hell of an architect with a sculpting knife, and can whittle and chip almost anything practical from a sturdy enough bit of wood. Of all the little trinkets and musical instruments I used to make as gifts for mother or baby Prim, her simplest design would put them all to shame. And I used to think I was pretty decent.

With my wood-whittling dreams crushed, we trudged on through the light snow cover, searching ever further for some place. Unknown exactly what it is that we have left our whatever shambles of homes and families we have left for, we just keep heading northwest. Although spring is meant to be just around the corner, our surroundings seem to be in disagreement regarding that.

And now, as we break after lunch and watch the ice melt off branches over the stream, I see what she had been hacking into existence as she followed my lead along the trek.

"Let me see it," I say and sheath my knife in my boot. She holds it delicately between just her thumb and trigger finger and leans her head back along the rock to watch me examine it.

Her smoke pipe is small but hefty, and places a nice weight in my cold hand. It’s warm at the bowl where embers are still smoldering. There’s no wind, and the smoke rises in ringlets upward.

"I feel it’s best when I’m outside someplace like this. It needs to be quiet, but also have the sound of winter on the ground."

"Like the muffled sound of a rabbit burrowing in a rock crevice?" I suggest.

"Like the creak of the trees when they lean into the wind." And her eyes drift down the hill, the snow reflecting brightly in them. We both do well in the woods; it’s a place of comfort for us. Things are simple here.

Joanna continues, “It’s best out here because it’s the only place I feel I can relax anymore.”

"I know what you mean," I respond, brushing a hand over her hair to bring her attention to the pipe I’m handing back to her. "I can’t stand people in town keep pretending they’re not looking at me. I can’t stand how my house is so dark and too big. Sometimes even the smell of Peeta’s baking drives me away."

Our time together out here has seen me open up more easily to her. Although I still can’t quite place my standing with Peeta, it’s easier to gain perspective when I have someone other than just Haymitch to talk to about it. Not that she usually lets me get away with talking about him. She gets snappy if I start saying his name too much, but I’m appreciative of that because it tells me to cool it with the over-thinking.  
We agree that thinking is something we’ve both had too much time doing as of late. It’s the reason I thought it was a brilliant idea of Joanna’s to get lost in the forest a few times a week. Not just for hunting trips, but actual day-long journeys.

"If he keeps experimenting with lemongrass and spinach I swear I’ll chuck my axe through his furnace," she grumbles as she strikes another match (another something she managed to whittle and magically conduce to flame with animal fat) and sucks air though the pipe. As the plant burns slowly, a vein of etched-out wood glows brighter than the rest, tracing the path of smoke into Joanna’s mouth.

I realize I’ve been staring almost exclusively at her this whole time, nearly entranced by the way she moves when her eyes glide down to watch the embers burn, or follow the puff of smoke lift away, or lick her chapped lips. So I turn my head down and to the left and let my fingers start scratching at a notch in the boulder I’m straddling.  
———————-  
v. 2

_I realize I've been staring almost exclusively at her this whole time, nearly entranced by the way she moves when her eyes glide down to watch the embers burn, or follow the puff of smoke lift away, or lick her chapped lips. So I turn my head down and to the left and let my fingers start scratching at a notch in the boulder I'm straddling._

_\---------_

"It's cold," Joanna says needlessly, but she shifts forward and scootches her back against the rock that rests between my knees. My legs lie on either side of her, sharing their warmth with her coat.

"Astute observation, Joanna. My wilderness hat is off to you."

I flick her ear. She elbows my shin. I cringe a little. We have fun.

"You're cold," she returns.

"Physically or emotionally?"

"Too cold to say." And it's silent for the next few moments again.

She bites into a piece of bark she had in her lap, tearing off a sharp strip. She taps out the burnt bowl and uses the the bark to scrape it clean.

We spend the next three hours trekking northeast. Although the recent snowfall has blanketed the region, there's still a slight smell of coal dust in the air, telling me we're still within the regions of District 12. We're trying to see how far it goes. Crossing two more hills and valleys, we finally reach the last expanse of sloping forest before a mighty winter-bare mountain.

"Looks cold up there," Joanna says. "I wonder if it's passable," I reply.

Joanna points her axe north. "Not as steep-looking that side. Cut a few razorback trails, should at least get us to the ridge."

"Let's get a closer look, then maybe we'll plan a real expedition," I say, taking off for it.

"Oooh ooh, you know I love me some adventure," Joanna sing-songs.

"Yea, I know you do," I grin down at my boots as I watch my next few steps.

We next pass through a vast field of tall grasses. Every now and then, Joanna swipes her axe clean and fast, chopping the field in half like a bladed gust of wind. I smile to myself as I step a little further away.

"So, you're telling me, you're a lumberjack who can't whistle?" I tease.

"Damn it, drop that already! Not a lumberjack," she pouts. "I learned how to cut trees and make useful shit, not traipse leisurely though life with a song in my heart!" She swipes the grass again, faster this time. 

"Yea, but, it's supposed to be a thing. You fell a tree, you whistle. Fell another tree, whistle. It's what I was taught you people did in Seven." My smile gets bigger as I give her another two feet of space.

"Oh, "us people," huh? That really what they been teaching at the schoolhouse now?" Joanna cocks her head at me and steps a little harder on the ground.

"Used to. We had a class pageant about the Districts. Song and everything," I shrug and take three big steps ahead of her.

"Oh, well as little miss songstress did you get the lead in the play? Singing all your misinformation and propaganda into the hearts and minds of citizens everywhere?" I can hear rather than see Joanna's eye rolls. She jumps and trots to catch up. I move a few more steps ahead.

"I won a ribbon," I tilt my head proudly. "D'you ever win anything? Best Wooder, Quickest Cutter? Hmm?" I skip backwards now as I taunt her. She's shaking her head so much her hair is falling lose from her tie.

"I'm the best fucking bitch with an axe you've ever seen, and you'd do well to remember that in situations such as these," She shakes her weapon at me and catches up again.

"Situations in which you can't take a little teasing?" I break into a slight jog, my bow bouncing on my shoulder.

"Situations in which you are alone with me in the vast wilderness," and with a toothy grin Joanna lunges after me, but I've already sprinted.

We race through the field with no apparent finish line for quite awhile. I dash into the treeline, and try to trip her up by vaulting over fallen logs or hidden huge stones. But she's as nimble on her feet as I am, and never missteps once. At one point she seems to fly up a fallen tree that rises about 10 feet above me, then jumps off, sinking her axe into another huge tree and scraping down the side to forest floor, cutting me off and forcing me to redirect quickly.

"You made a mistake coming back in here, Everdeen! The trees are my home!" She shouts passionately as she stands up from her landing.

"Well, I'm a really good shot with things that live in trees!" I shout back, sliding beneath another downed and snow-covered log. She catches up to me though. We burst through the tree line again. I notice the unfamiliar sound of my own laughter as I bound down the slope, before I notice that the only footsteps I hear are mine. Slowing down, I look for Joanna over my shoulder. She's come to a complete stop, panting hot air and narrowing her eyes at me. I stop running and turn to face her.

"…What?" I shout, still feeling the adrenaline pump in my blood. Her silence sets me on edge. I turn around slowly, realizing that she wasn't staring at me, but at what was behind me.

 

A mountain stream, about 20 yards wide.

\----------

V. 2

 


End file.
